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Helping Afghanistan Helps Ourselves
Op-Ed by Chargé d'Affaires Scott F. Kilner
Austria Press Agency (APA)
June 12, 2008
If you read a newspaper these days and an article starts with "Afghanistan," it is all too often followed by "bombing," "casualties," or "narcotics." This reflects the tremendous challenges today in Afghanistan, but here is some good news from a place you might not have expected.
In the southern province of Helmand, 600 Afghan teenagers are attending a newly rebuilt high school, thanks to the work of an international team from the United Kingdom, Estonia and Denmark, and the United States, working alongside Afghan partners. In nearby Farah Province, Italian and American members of a Provincial Reconstruction Team have built a school, dug wells, distributed wheat seed to farmers, and re-built a market. These development efforts-and thousands more like them-were made possible by international pledges made at or before the 2006 donors' conference in London. The international community decided then that Afghanistan, once the home of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, will never again be allowed to deteriorate into a failed, tyrannical state that exports terrorism.
Our assistance was not purely magnanimous; it directly benefits our own security in Europe, America and around the globe. That is why NATO leaders, at their Summit in Bucharest in April, renewed their long-term commitment to the Alliance mission. On Thursday representatives of more than 80 countries, including Austria, will gather once again, this time in Paris, to renew their long-term commitments to help Afghanistan. New pledges will be critical. The United States and others are calling on the International Conference in Support of Afghanistan to exceed the pledges at the 2006 donors conference. This will enable our Afghan partners to take the next step in their reconstruction and begin to meet the goals they set out in the new five-year Afghanistan National Development Strategy. The United States, which has contributed $26 billion, will pledge a substantial amount in support of these priorities.
Clearly, rebuilding Afghanistan is no simple task. Security and development are inexorably linked, and we face a tenacious, though increasingly marginalized enemy. Fortunately, the vast majority of Afghans oppose the terrorists' terrible goals and tactics. And Afghanistan has come a long way from the days of the Taliban, who stoned women to death and barred girls from attending school. Today, more than 1.5 million Afghan girls are in school, and total enrollment has risen from about 900,000 to more than 6 million. More than 75 percent of eligible voters turned out for the nation's first free and democratic presidential elections in 2004, and there are now more than 100 registered political parties. Afghanistan needs pledges of support for elections in 2009 and 2010, including funds for voter registration, election administration, and voter awareness programs.
Meanwhile, we must make clear that we have increasing expectations for the Afghanistan government. Its new National Solidarity Program, a government-initiated, bottom-up development scheme, is a welcome sign of the support it is getting from the Afghan people. But corruption remains, and donors have to know that their contributions are reaching the Afghan people. Future generations will wonder how we helped the Afghan people and also whether we did enough to protect Europe, America and the world from the threats of instability and terrorism. Like London in 2006, the donors conference in Paris will be a test. Rather than historians asking "Did they do enough?," let them instead ask, "How did they do so much?"
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